Hello

I keep having a problem with Inkscape, it won't export out my image as a PNG.  It indicates "The chosen area to be exported is invalid".  It works for a bit and then all of a sudden I start to get this error message.  I have not changed my process.  When it happened before, I got my husband to uninstall and reinstall Inkscape and that fixed the problem.  I really don't want to have to keep doing this.  Can anyone suggest how to fix the problem?

Thank You!

Hi KWcreative,

It is possibly a setting in the export menu.
First you select something and then look at the export menu. There the blue tab for the export area should be page or drawing or selection.

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If the custom tab is selected, that can give all kinds of problems. For example when it only wants to export a tiny area.
 

Thanks for your reply!  As far as I am aware, it has always been on drawing if I have not selected the whole image or on selection when I have.  I noticed the output numbers in the export area do not change whether I am on drawing or selection.  I feel this is a deeper issue causing the program to be corrupted because once I get this error message and I open a completely different file to export it won't.  I have to completely uninstall the program and reinstall to reset everything.  I had to do it again yesterday.

Hi kwc,

Which version of Inkscape do you use and on what system? Perhaps it is a bug.

I always select the area I want to export before exporting to png. Or I use the page tab.
Have you tried these options and does the problem still exist?

I just downloaded the latest version of inkscape.  I am on a PC.  Yes, I have tried selecting the area as well but once it runs into the issue nothing will work to export.  

Hi Kwcreative,

So, I assume that yours is a pc with Windows 10? And the downloaded Inkscape is 0.92.5?

I cannot replicate the problem, but you could stay around here.
Maybe someone else knows what is going on, or if it is a bug.

Looking through some bug reports, if people had problems with png export. The idea was to install the latest developer's version of Inkscape.
That would be 1.0rc1 for Windows. You could try that and look if that solves the problem? https://inkscape.org/release/1.0rc1/windows/

Experiencing the same thing here.

Inkscape 0.92 (Inkscape 0.92.5 (2060ec1f9f, 2020-04-08)), running on Ubuntu 20.04.2 (AMD Ryzen 7, 40 GB RAM, 1TB NVMe, NVidia GPU [with proprietary drivers]) - completely up to date with patches.

First time this has ever happened to me.

I do this all the time (Inkscape is my Social Media meme factory - but that's not all I use it for) - and it's never happened to me before.

At first I thought it was because the selection I was trying to export had clip masks (but I've done this before anyway - exported selections with clip masks to PNG), but I just tried it with another part of the same document, without any clip masks, and the same symptom.

My workaround has been doing a screen shot of the document, then cropping using Shotwell.

@xoutlawx, please share an example svg file for evaluation.

Just created a new SVG with similar elements as having the symptom, and still getting this symptom...

Attached ...

Unrelated - just tried to install Inkscape on a new Macbook Pro M1, to see if I can reproduce this symptom, but it won't even startup (I guess I should raise another forum post)...

xoutlawx

Unrelated - just tried to install Inkscape on a new Macbook Pro M1

Doesn´t make sense to me; I´m running the latest Inkscape on M1MacMini - works. But you´ll need to clean BigSur from any other former installations in. order to run and keep just 1 Inkscape version.

No problem with PNG export here (the document is made from1 PNG and 1 JPG).

Resolved my issue on Linux...  

I just did an "sudo apt purge inkscape", then had a hunt through my $HOME and removed anything that looked like it belonged to Inkscape...  then re-installed - and problem's gone on Linux - i.e. I no longer get that dialog box and I can successfully export anything from inkscape to PNG file...

Okay - unrelated : now to try and get Inkscape working on M1 Macbook Pro...